


screaming the name of a foreigner's god

by craftingdead



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Minor Character Death, Reincarnation, the tags make it seem worse than it is. kind of, this is called 'reincarnation station' on google docs lmaoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 12:51:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18873556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craftingdead/pseuds/craftingdead
Summary: Be wary, children. Watch for when the moon sinks below the horizon and how the Matron plays it by the strings and forces you to howl, screaming as flames erupt in your body and tear out your soul.Watch out, because she is not as kind as how you think. This is how it is, and how it will always be.





	screaming the name of a foreigner's god

Anywhere Aphmau walks, the people around her spread.

It’s like she has imaginary wings floating behind her; they always stay five, ten feet back—and no one ever brings it up! She can tell that they’re doing it, but whenever she whirls around and demands to know what her friends are doing, they always act confused.

“Oh, Aph,” they say, “what are you talking about? We’re standing right next to you!”

But they aren’t, and she can tell it. She frowns, bites the inside of her cheek, narrows her eyes. “No, you aren’t!” she whines and gestures around herself. “See! That’s not right next to me. You’re far behind.”

Then they look to each other, like she’s a maniac, like she’s speaking in tongues. Approach her gently, ask her if she’s been feeling well, if she’s been having any nightmares or weird dreams that may be the reason she’s so paranoid about people “straying behind her.” It’s always with some vague mock in the back of their voices; they’re waiting for her to say no, for her to scream about how she’s not imagining it, how they  _ are  _ standing far behind her, like she has wings.

She just bites her cheek harder. Flinches as the taste of coppery blood fills it like a basin, pooling over the edge (and spilling over her lips). Shakes her head. “I must’ve been imagining it,” she says bashfully, gives in, doesn’t admit to what she knows is true.

They just shake their heads again. “Silly Aph!” 

“Girl really does think she’s an angel, huh? How funny. It’s like when she was younger, running around in dollar store fairy wings and all!”

“Hey, Aph, have you talked to any of your other angel friends recently? Maybe Irene or Esmund? Haha!”

Aphmau rolls her eyes and laughs along with them. (She wants to bare her teeth and show them what a  _ real  _ angel looks like.) _ I really was the dreamer—man, I couldn’t go a day without trying to show off those things—yeah, I invited them over for dinner last week! It was… it was… it was…  _

“Stop making fun of me,” she says firmly, plants her feet on the ground, holds their gazes in a stare.  _ You have no idea what I’m capable of. None of you do. _

“Okay, wow, Irene, you don’t have to get so sensitive. It’s just a joke. Just a little fun.”

She can’t tell if the sparks in her eyes are just filters of the lights or orbs radiating around her body; she’s their sun, their moon—they’re the stars. A little voice in the back of her head laughs at “wow, Irene.”  _ Oh, you have no idea, it purrs. _

She no longer laughs at jokes about her wings. No one makes them anymore, either. She’s pretty sure they can see the faint outline, feel how the wind changes, shiver as she lands her gaze on them. She is not mortal, and maybe, she never was.

 

//

 

Laurance impales himself on his own sword and coughs up fire instead of blood, magma spilling from his mouth and choking his lungs.

He wakes up screaming like a dragon, eyes tearing up and hot flashes shooting down and up his spine and flooding his nervous system. Everything is on  _ fire. _

Cadenza slams the door open in a panic, knocking his desk over as she leaps over it to where he’d fallen on the floor, blankets hanging off the side of the bed. “Laurance, are you alright? Laurance? Can you hear me—Laurance, please tell me you can hear me! Laurance—DAD! DAD LAURANCE IS HURT—”

The moon shines in through the window, a sharpened claw, and his eyes slit with it. And, for the first time, instead of seeing the cascading darkness of the ceiling, the jagged red rock pulsing with a twisted form of life, sand sneering at him, he sees the stars.

Laurance is in the hospital for two months. It takes them two weeks to find out what’s wrong with him—severe internal bleeding, issues caused when he fell off the bed, apparently he was concussed, and a high fever spiking at 109 when at worst. He almost dies two times, heart stopping once. He’s only eleven and sees Cadenza, his older sister, sobbing at his bedside more times than he could count. And that’s only when he was conscious. 

They never find out what caused all the problems. Laurance doesn’t know, but the doctors never believe him when he tells them so. They just ignore his gaze and talk to his dad about finding a good therapist, finding someone he could  _ trust. _ Like it was all in his mind, his claims of “knowing nothing!” 

They think he got into a fight. They think he crawled his way up through his shattered window (that must’ve been how he saw his moon… or something) and passed out on his bed before he could get proper medical attention. 

Cadenza cocks her head in confusion. “But I saw him come home?” she said. “He wasn’t bleeding externally when I found him. He hadn't it been feverish, either! How could all of this had happened so quickly?”

Their dad doesn’t say anything; just stares at the wall with his fists clenched tight and shakes as Cadenza tries to plead with the doctors, begging them if there’s anything more they can do.

Laurance stares at the ceiling like it was covered in eyes, all blinking down at him with bloodshot and bleeding eyes. A droplet falls between his eyes and he jolts awake to Cadenza leaning down and kissing him on the forehead, murmuring how it would be alright, she would watch over him, before walking out and shutting off the lights in the room.

The city screams at night. Laurance blinks up at the ceiling again and, through a feverish daze, rasps, “Vylad.”

 

//

 

Zane walks up to him and hands over a foam sword wordlessly, one covered in black tape already in his other hand.

Garroth runs his hand over it—blue, like the color he always wears—and looks up at him. “What am I supposed to do with this, little brother?”

Zane bristles like the thorns spread across the rose bushes they have in their backyard, tended to carefully by Zinnia and getting trampled by Garte in the winter, when he finds them distasteful and a waste to their snow-stricken backyard. “Don’t call me that!” he snaps, voice cracking, “and we’re gonna fight! Dad bought these for me so I wanna put them to use!”

“Really? Foam swords?” He quirks his lips upward into an amused smile, watching an annoyed flush spread out over Zane’s face and stain the tips of his ears red. “I’m not sure you want to do this with me, little brother. I will destroy you.”

“Stop calling me that! I’m a year younger than you if that!” Zane points the sword to his neck mockingly. “You seem so cocky for someone who’s never held a sword! I will pummel you into the ground if you do not get up and fight me now!”

“What are you, four-eleven? I think I could win easily.”

“Shut up!” he spits at him. “S-stop being such a pussy and just fight me already. You’re so boring, Garroth, let’s fight!”

Garroth turns to him, ready to scold him for saying such a word, but Zane is already scampering away, stopping and turning a few feet away, one foot forward, sword at the ready. He sighs, picks himself up, and balances the foam sword in his hand, as if to see how heavy it is, how he should hold it, “admiring” the work of it. (It isn’t heavy at all, almost weightless in his hands, and the tape job Zane must’ve gone is terrible. But his brother grins at his works, the way he acts as if this was all real, so he does it for him.)

“If you are so certain,” he announces, loud and booming, “then fight me no—”

Zane lunges at him with his teeth bared and, for a second, Garroth doesn’t see his brother; he sees an eight foot, towering, metal and obsidian priest with a grin sharpened of stone and forged in brimstone.

He feels himself move; ducks away from his attack, watches as he sails past him in surprise, and slams Zane into the ground with the back of the foam sword and his fist, putting his foot on the back of his neck as his face slams into the ground with a sickening crack.

Zane scrambles up, holding his nose, and screams at the top of his lungs. Garroth just blinks black particles out of his eyes. His silence is armor but Zane has always been a tattletale, so he sits on the ground and awaits his revelation.

 

//

 

Dante’s relationship with Nicole is shaky. She looks up at him, pouting, trying to stretch out her lithe body to reach his full height, but he only grins an empty smile and looks to the side, out the window, the pink-tinted sky.

“I don’t love you,” she whispers a year later, pulling back from a late-night breathless kiss, longing and crying in his bedroom. She blinks pretty tears off of her pretty eyelashes and Dante sighs and wipes lipstick off his lips.

“I don’t either,” he says back and shakes his head as she slides off his lap and leaves without another word. Her name in his contacts changes; his in hers probably does as well. There’s an empty part in his heart that doesn’t feel romantic but familial, the way he feels looking at young kids sitting on the edges of streets, walking home alone from school.

Dante should’ve stayed with her. Made a little sad family, dysfunctional, divorce two years after birth. Have a little boy, maybe name him after his grandfather or something, and set him off into the world with divorced parents who don’t love each other and maybe never did, both pining for another but barely holding together by a tattered string or thread.

But he’s young and restless, fidgeting in his chair like he’s hopped on medication he wasn’t prescribed like a teen. He almost dyes his hair pink and red, but Laurance drags him back before he can, asking him what the hell he was doing. He switches clothes between his usual jackets and capes and armors, screaming at Garroth that he’s “cosplaying!” before shutting his door. Wants to wear more brown, more white, bright blue.

He enlists in fencing classes. Needs to feel alive. Personally, no other winter has ever been as dark as this one—all his friends away, doing their own friend stuff and minding their own. Damn. Friendship. Business. Gene blocks him, for whatever reason, during that break.

Dante only gets them back in his grasps for a year. A whole year, stretching outwards and infinite. A deep protectiveness activates in him when he sees her, deep bags underneath her eyes and looking like hell dragged through. 

He’ll be like a guard dog; baring his teeth at passing people and barking whenever the doorbell rings, whenever anyone walks in, drops something upstairs; the mailman passes by and he resists the urge to bound of his house and tell the dude to fuck right off.

Instead, he stands back and watches as they leave for Starlight whatever-the-fuck, bristling with anger as they leave him alone, again.

The TV flickers dangerously at night. The moon is full and bloody, shining in through his window with all the lights in the house turned off. Dante’s slumped against the couch, watching as Aaron kills a man, a sword ripping through his chest. He watches all of it; all the death, murder, all the dead bodies. Men, women, children… He can’t tear his gaze away. The narrators on the news are speechless, watching along. Dante has known Aaron for years but feels like it’s been centuries since they’ve last spoken, ever spoken.

He turns the TV off lazily. Then, he raids the kitchen and drinks all the alcohol there, trying to force the horrifying picture of rotting bodies and maggot-filled skulls from his mind as he stumbles around his house. He hits his head against the wall, hard, hears the shattering of his glass, and carves “PROTECTOR” into his arm with the shards.

Dante wakes up in the morning to deafening silence and a crushing loneliness thousands of years in the making.

 

//

 

Nicole rips open her pillows, shatters her glass, throws her computer and phone against the wall and screams as they crack. Rakes her nails down her wall hard enough to leave a mark and snap two of them in the process, blood filling up in the cracks. Roxy paces around her feet, whining miserably but that can’t be right because ROXY’S FUCKING DEAD and she’s filled with the memories of some STUPID FUCKING GIRL with a STUPID FUCKING LIFE and a bloody war bubbling on her tongue with the taste of copper.

 

//

 

Katelyn sits at a table, legs crossed underneath it, one foot bouncing up and down gently to the beat of some upbeat pop song playing softly.

(She sits at a table, arms spread out across it, bracing her form as a guard bursts into her chambers, eyes wild with fear and desperation as screams echo from outside.)

A girl slides in across from her, pink hair choppier and shorter than the last time she saw it. Her blue eyes flicker dangerously as she watches Katelyn, forcing a shiver down her spine, involuntary, the taste of danger spreading from the tip of her tongue to each end of her fingertips. She crosses and uncrosses her legs.

(The guard grips her table and begins rambling about the portal, about the Shadow Knights, but Katelyn shushes him with a low look and darkening eyes. “I’ll take care of it myself,” she growls, extends, stretches out her back, and brushes back her bewildered men.)

Ivy leans in close, looking like a snake, grinning like a fox. “You feel it too?” she whispers, leaning over to grab one of Katelyn’s hands. “The energy? The power? I’ve never felt anything like it before. It feels  _ delicious.” _

(He is caught off guard by her—how, she doesn’t know. She just knows that his head needs to be on a pike to support and let her people heal.)

Katelyn is shaking, a sudden chill washing over her body. Ivy’s eyes constrict and she smiles with more than enough teeth. “Can you, or can you not? It’s like what we talked about, as kids; a chance to seize. We are more than anyone ever thought, and you know it too. You could come with me, you know. We could be greater than anything in this pathetic little world. Don’t you want to know where we came from? Who pulls the strings?”

(He was always so, so bad and so, so pale, almost see-through in bright light. He gives in quickly, too quickly, and for the next few days, she is petrified and terrified of anything and everything he could do. Katelyn does not sleep for two days straight, crashes for sixteen hours, and doesn’t sleep for the rest of the week, either.)

“Get the fuck away from me,” Katelyn says, shaking the memories from her head, pulling her coat and scarf closer to her body.

Ivy narrows her eyes. “Are you sure about that, sister?” she teases, nails sharp as claws. There’s venom in her voice and poison ‘round her tongue. “We could rule. Together. Make those bastards  _ bow.” _

She looks around the little Cafe they were in; no one was watching, overhearing. It was like time itself was stopped, everyone still as statues and the dead they were built after because being a revolutionary gets you nowhere, but being a martyr makes everyone love you dead. “You have no idea what you are talking about,” she hisses, and Ivy’s eyes dilate just a little before she was up on her feet and shoving in her chair as well.

“I guess so, Katie,” she says dully, pulls her bag over her shoulder, and walks quickly out of the place into the snow storm outside.

Katelyn blinks and time returns to normal and she doesn’t remember any of their conversation in the morning.

 

//

 

Vylad lays on the roof, a coat too big for him resting around his shoulders and passing just past his thigh. It was the middle of the night, he was in a t-shirt and boxers, but it had taken him enough getting up here so he’s not gonna pass up this opportunity.

A crow caws loudly in the background, taking off of a tree and scattering leaves and shaking branches. It curves it’s wings into a dive and lands next to him, letting a feather float off and land on his chest.

It pokes curiously at his leg, almost hard enough to draw blood. Vylad flicks at it with a finger and it flies off.

It doesn’t even make it to the next roof. It starts convulsing mid-air, wings dipping low then soaring high again as it’s head shakes and it caws loudly and violently. Shakes back and forth and falls four feet down then rises two more, six and four, eight and six. It almost crashes into the ground a few times before it gets itself together and manages to rise above the incoming houses, just enough to be illuminated by the moon fully.

Then, it plummets. Like Icarus from the sky, fire foaming from its beak, like an animal hopped on rabies. The ground accepts it welcomingly and it's dead before it hits the ground, dead before its neck snaps on the hard concrete. Hot magma flows from its mouth and burns into the ground, scorching chalk marks from neighborhood kids.

Vylad wipes hot tears off from his face and his vision blurs.

 

//

 

He wakes up with a shovel in hand, dirt covering his legs and arms, the night black as a void. There’s not even a sliver of moon to shine down on him through the trees. Zane always knew he was fucked up (his head begging to hurt people, tear out their throats, make them pay) but the shovel doesn’t even drop from his hands when he looks down.

Two bodies. Both with blunt force trauma to the head, blood spilling out of their noses, ears, lips chapped and cracked. One of them has long, blonde hair and glasses. The other has pale skin and reddish-brown hair, goggles perched around his neck.

Zane shudders and continues digging, shoveling dirt onto both of the bodies in a hurried attempt to bury them underneath the earth. He doesn’t know where he is—just that he’s surrounded by tall, looming trees. No birds chirp, no crickets sound, no wolves howl, nothing. The forest around him is completely silent. He digs until both of them are covered in dirt and then he drops the shovel and lumbers away, the trees with eyes that watch him as he leaves.

The next morning he chalks it up to a horrible, bad dream. Earlier that week they heard that a disaster happened where Emmalyn and Kenmur used to live, so they were all paranoid for their two old friends. He wakes up sweating and sick.

Zane stumbles to the bathroom and washes the dirt off his legs and arms. A dream. He combs his dirty hair, and then washes it, watching as dirt and leaves shake out of it and swivel down the drain. Just a dream, that was all it was. He brushes his teeth and his gums are bleeding, and he spits blood into the sink but it comes up black and rotten. Only a dream.

“I haven’t seen Jeffory in a while,” Katelyn comments the day after, tapping her nails against the table. Zane says nothing and just stares into empty air.

Sometimes, when he sees Kawaii~Chan, he wants to hurt her. Even after they get together and kiss and profess their love for each other. He wants to rip out her hair, slam her head against the table and watch as she bleeds out screaming.

Kawaii~Chan pokes him and asks him what he’s thinking about. He shakes that thought from his head, forces a smile, and says nothing. Lily and Jacob haven’t called in a while. Zane wonders why.

 

//

 

Ivy feels like a goddess, spread out across her bed, her hair a crown, laughing maniacally with a scythe in her other hand. She’s powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful, power, power, power, power, power, power

 

//

 

Gene, Sasha, and Zenix are more than they ever have been. Gene says something nasty and they feel a deep urge in their chest. Drags him out to an alley and beats him senseless and bloody, watches as he throws up blood onto the ground. He raises a horrible, angry eye like a father raising the back of his hand and spits at them. “Ingrates!” he howls. “You were never fucking anything, weren’t you?”

Sasha and Zenix sulk out of the alleyway. Zenix’s locs are covered in blood and Sasha has a bruised eye. But the two of them feel free, finally, for the first time ever. It’s like taking a fresh breath of air.

“We’re free,” Zenix whispers, takes her hand, platonic, like a brother, like a son. His eyes shine cherry red in the neon lights of the city.

Sasha rubs a thumb against his hand, nodding. “We’re finally free,” she says back, feeling Gene’s impact on their life fade like a bruise. “I hope he fucking dies from blood loss,” she adds suddenly, digging her nails into Zenix’s palm.

Zenix’s grin in response is wicked.  _ We were never knights, _ she thinks to herself  _ because if we were, we would already be skullfucked and passed out in the back of someones van and fucking dead in a ditch. _

“Why are we called Shadow Knights if the only people we protect is ourselves?” Zenix echos, like he can read her mind—and he probably can.

“Because we kill the big bad dragon,” she responds, feeling the weight of years dig into her throat. “Big bad dragon, Gene, the Lord Irene herself, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that now, we’re calling the shots.”  _ The king is dead in an alleyway; not for long, probably, but it gives the prisoners just enough time to flee to the countryside and start a new life deep in the city with wolves and snakes flickering around them like old-timey movies, their words whispering above their heads before they even speak. _

“You’re a poet,” Zenix says mockingly.

 

//

 

_ Be revived. _

Aaron drags his dead soul out of his burning village, wife and son and friends and family dead behind him, heads on a pike of teeth wrapped around his neck and choking him and squeezing like a snake.

_ Be revived. _

He holds up a priest by the neck and watches as a relic kills them both, scattering their ashes into oblivion and forcing them into a deep submission in a dimension only the stupid and the sick dare to enter.

_ Be revived. _

Now he’s Shad, being forced to hurt the only woman he ever loved more than a lover and less than a soulmate. Lily was more to him than Aphmau ever was, but their children share the same hair, skin, eyes and it’s hard to tear his gaze away when she’s in tears. He’s not a murderer, but his heart breaks in five and maybe he’s just murdered himself, his chance at survival, Shad’s choice of letting him still live.

_ Be revived. _

Aaron’s a werewolf now, in a world so disconnected from the one he came from, deep and dark and filled with modern technology and neon lights and werewolves and meif’wa spread out on every corner, magic is common, there are no more lords but instead presidents, dictators, kings, that one teacher he had in fifth grade. Power never changes, just spreads, and a voice in his head tells him that this world is much greedier than the one he came from.

_ Be revived. _

“You’re a MONSTER, Aaron!” “Hide your eyes, Aaron!” “We can’t let people see you, Aaron, you’re a danger to society and yourself!” “I had to hide as a kid, and so do you. You will obey me, I am your father!” “Do you want to kill everyone you love, just like your grandfather? If not, you. Must. LISTEN.”

_ Be revived! _

Aphmau impales a knife into his chest and shoves him off a cliff with her foot, toxic green eyes staring down at him as he hits the ground and everything goes black as his spine breaks in two. Irene forces his spine together with tape and glue and heals the hole in his heart with a force that makes him scream, scream, scream.

_ Be revived! _

Aphmau slashes a knife at him one, two, three, screaming and sobbing as his friends watch from behind her, worry clouding their eyes. But he can’t move, just stays as he is repeatedly hurt over and over again by a girl he thought he loved, that he still loves, but thought she loved him. He hugs her and she comes back to herself but it’s not the same, never will be.

_ BE REVIVED! _

Garroth is on the ground and Aaron is hunted. He’s shaking in place and Aphmau’s in front of him, arms spread wide with tears glistening in her eyes. (He hears his father’s words again, clear as day and as dark as night.)

_ BE REVIVED! _

He watches as Ein kills her, a shot through her heart. Watches as she begs him to keep her living, keep her safe, keep her alright. Her eyes fade to a dull gray and he can’t help but watch as her soul fades out of her body.

_ BE REVIVED! _

People scream in horror as he kills Blaze. Kills more werewolves. Turns into a monster and kills them, too. Rips out Ein’s throat tastes his blood in his mouth, swallows and shudders it down his throat. Katelyn and Garroth put an end to it quickly, too quickly, and blood stains his teeth.

_ BE REVIVED _

Aaron’s father kills himself so Aaron can be safe and he is, officially, the last person to survive in his fucked up family. Irene grabs his hand again and pulls and he wants to tear her eyes out and beg for his old life back.

_ BE REVIVED _

Aphmau is alive, facing off against the Demon Warlock, but she can’t do it by herself. Her eyes fade back to green and his worst nightmare is relived in a blue-purple shirt and skirt and a polished knife with “EMERALD” carved into the handle, like some nasty reminder.

**_BE REVIVED_ **

He can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t remember he can’t

 

//

 

Travis turns the station randomly, trying to search for something to gain his interest, gazing lazily out at the traffic in front of him.

_ “There was a girl that got lost in the woods near the mountain. Half of the town went looking for her. Thankfully, I found her, but… so did one of the Demon Warlock’s minions… …I was able to get to her in time, but it was stronger than any imps we had faced before. I wasn’t strong enough to take it on alone. At least, not in my human form. So I did what I had to do. I became a demon again. I managed to destroy the imp and save the girl! But when I turned to her I could… see it in her eyes. She was panicked at the sight of me. I was a demon in her eyes. She wouldn’t let me get close to her… she just kept screaming…” _

He turns off that stations and switches to one playing mindless pop music. He almost drives his car off of a bridge.

 

//

 

He lays across the deck, blood held in the basin where his neck and chest were. His tongue lolls out of his mouth, eyes milky and vacant, skin colorless. 

In the morning next, he will not wake up to the sound of helicopters circling the area, bringing up the dead and soothing the living. He will be apart of the bodies burned in an effort to keep suspicions down; yet the alarm bells already have rung, news stations all over the world playing Aaron’s rampage and everything before and after.

In a week or two, his family will forget about him. Zack, if he is still alive, will slowly forget his name. His mother, whoever she is, will be scrubbing dishes and then realizing that she no longer has a son, and can no longer remember his face. His half-sister, the one he obsessed over, will only remember him in terrible nightmares and flashbacks, waking up sweating furiously and crying. Gene will forget about him and it will not affect anything in the progress of time. Michi will be doing her makeup sharp and wicked in the future and realizes that she never knew a blue-haired werewolf boy.

Everyone he went to high school with. The pack, Dottie and Rylan and Daniel (if they live to tell the tale, if they survive another day); Blaze, wherever he may be now; Lucinda, while working on potions feverishly throughout the night, forgetting who poisoned her years before; Zane, before calling up his brother; Aaron, but he had forgotten everyone long before. Katelyn, Tatiana, Garroth, Kacey, Teony, Kim,  _ everyone. _

Irene had cut his throat long before, holding up his head as blood spilled into a fine glass stained with color. It turns black as night and she pours it out, useless.

“This is not your world,” she whispers, nails digging into the side of his cheeks and ripping out his gums and teeth to keep him from speaking, blood pouring out of his mouth. His eyes stare up at her, wide and beady.

He is not important to this story. He is not important now and was not important years ago when he decided to ruin his own life when he got a taste of what the devil had in store in the form of green foam burning his throat like acid as it slid down and gave him anything and everything desired; a crunchy apple. Pick your poison, baby,  _ we’re all gonna die. _

He is not desirable, or wanted, needed, important, essential. He and the pack, Zack, everyone born into a different world stitched up from the last will eventually fade and be forgotten by the passage of time.

After his kin blink the fleeting memories of him from their mind, everything will pass as needed and as wanted. The seasons will past and he will be irrelevant. This is how it is now, how it will continue to be, and how it always has been.


End file.
